


Paradise

by GreenElphaba



Category: Trigun (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28261047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenElphaba/pseuds/GreenElphaba
Summary: What if episode 23 had ended differently? Every good man needs a bad man who loves him.
Relationships: Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	Paradise

Ch. 1

He was bleeding out. He could feel that much, slow death heralded by dizziness and cold fingers, the roar of his pulse in his ears becoming the hiss of an hourglass, rapidly emptying. He turned his steps away from anyone and everyone who might grieve for him, might be hurt by the last moments of his life.

He could have gone to a bar, he supposed. With the whole town empty, he could have gone anywhere. So he went to church—a last place, as it had once been a first place, one final table on which to lay himself out and look at all the pieces, try to see once and for all what he was.

It was no good, of course. Death no doubt had its truths, but the only truth Nick Wolfwood was finding in the dying was that he didn’t want to. Years of living cheek-by-jowl with death, closer than a lover, and all he could do as his ruined insides mixed and muddied their contents was howl with silent regret.

He did not expect to be found until he was long cold—had gone some way to insuring it, as best he could, even tried to stopper his own bleeding guts long enough to not lay a trail right to his final resting place. He expected the sudden knowledge of his own grey status in the life of his best friend to prevent that worthy from wanting to find him. But if Vash the Stampede were truly predictable, Knives wouldn’t need an army of assassins.

He’d lacked the strength to close the door behind himself and he did not sense any approach, was taken by surprise by strong lean arms wrapping around him from behind, pulling him from the bare support of the Punisher with a clatter. Nick had a moment of dizzy confusion, rare rain on his face, but it was salt, it was tears, it was Vash the Stampede doing the thing Nick had so very much wanted him not to do—cry for a dying dog of a man.

“No no no no.” Vash’s voice swooped around him, like the man was close and then far and then close again. “Don’t you do this, Wolfwood, I can’t lose you too. I can’t.” He sounded genuinely frantic and Nick found enough energy left to be angry—at himself, a little, but mostly at the people who had set them on this particular path to hell.

His mouth was numb and far away, but Nick made himself say, “Sure, spiky. I’m on it.”

Vash shook his head, started biting at himself, and it took Nick a moment to realize he was tearing at the glove he wore over his real hand, revealing scarred flesh. It was impressive enough to watch how fast he could bite through leather when he wanted, but who really knew what Vash the Stampede was capable of, when all was said and done. Bare skin found bare skin, fumbling through the layers of Nick’s clothing, now soaked in blood. “I won’t let you go,” Vash said harshly, and Nick didn’t know what he was doing, but it hurt, his nerves somehow finding a new type of agony not already covered by a gut full of lead. He pushed at Vash, but whichever of them might have been the stronger on Nick’s best day, this was not that and he didn’t even succeed in rocking him.

“Hurts, spiky!”

“I know, I know. I’m _sorry_ ,” Vash said. “I don’t know any other way. I can’t do it for me but maybe I can do it for you if I can just—” More tears spilled down his cheeks, a small fortune in water, more precious than gold.

“It’s okay,” Nick said, although it wasn’t. Dying was bad enough, dying was a hot cruel bubble of senseless hurt and rage, but dying while this particular person looked on was infinitely worse, a crime he couldn’t name even to himself. _A true sin against the principle of mercy._ “Go on, Vash. I didn’t want you to see this.”

He so rarely used Vash’s actual name that the blond paused, looked at him, breathing steadying somewhat. And, because he was a dead man and there was just time to remove a single entry in his lifetime of regret, Nick clawed his way up Vash’s coat and laid his numb lips on the other man’s. That was it, that was all the strength he had, and Vash’s single gasp against his mouth stayed with him as he fell back, able to smile a little now. There are worse last sights, Nick thought, his darkening vision fixed on Vash’s eyes.

Brilliant turquoise, a spill of sky, and now widening, glowing, the eerie beauty of angelic light eating the raw daylight from the church door. Nick was beyond fear now, beyond pain though not beyond wishing, and the glow ate the rest of his vision without even a murmur of protest from him.

Vash’s mouth covered his again, and Nick tasted blood—not his own. “Just a little,” Vash whispered, or the Plant who was mostly Vash whispered, eyes wide and strange. “Take what I have and _live.”_

Nick swallowed somehow, coughed, and then coughed again, much more energetically, as what felt like the mother of all shots of whiskey burned its way through his guts. It hurt, hurt like a lifetime of mutations and enhancements had hurt. He didn’t scream now, just like he hadn’t screamed any of those other times, and Vash grabbed him, held him, trapped his feeble writhing in a cage of arms. There were images in the onslaught, feelings not his own, and Nick reached for them with half-conscious desperation, felt another mind, a familiar mind, catch and tangle with his own.

Vash gasped, or perhaps they both did; for a moment, Nick wasn’t sure who was who, had no way to tell if one or both throats had made that sound of understanding and discovery. But he could think, could see, could breathe again; bullets were oozing out of his skin, clinking on the floor of the church or tangling in his ruined clothes.

“Oh my God,” Nick said as the glow died. The two men looked at each other. Nick struggled until he could sit up on his own, still dizzy with blood loss but alive. “Vash, what did you _do_?”

If anything, the blond looked more off-balance than Nick felt, eyes wide and more vulnerable than Nick was used to seeing of late. “I—don’t know.” One hand lifted like he would reach out to Nick again, then fell back, closed into a fist. Nick looked at him and felt the emotions behind the gesture—the diminishing panic, the loss, the sheepishness that followed a true paroxysm of emotion, the queasy uncertainty of living in a body he was never quite sure he controlled—and felt his own heart ache in response. _Oh my God,_ he thought again, and glanced at the cross above the altar. _You sure did shout at me today. I hear You._ He was the one who reached out, completed the gesture with shaking hands, wrapped his arms around Vash’s neck and felt the other man melt against him.

“I feel you,” Nick said. “I almost hear you in my head. What happened? What did you do?” He didn’t know what was happening or why, but he knew somehow that his touch was helping, unknotting a terrible tension deep within, walking Vash back a few steps on the dire path Knives had set him on, rewinding at least this terrible day as though it had not been.

“I don’t know, I really don’t,” Vash repeated, a little uneasy and a lot relieved. They looked at one another for a long moment.

Nick was pretty sure it was his lust at first, his reawakening body increasingly aware of the proximity of the most beautiful man he’d ever met. He was accustomed to wanting Vash, had long ago decided that it was pointless, that either Vash the Stampede was straight or, more likely, had no interest whatsoever in humans, no matter how much he might joke about it. The burn of lust, the ache of unrequited desire, was a familiar one, particularly in the wake of a bad fight. This time, however, he felt it pass through him into Vash, felt it spark something in the blond, felt an answering rush, a powerful current. “Wolfwood…” Vash said, startled and wanting, legs shifting, suddenly a whole new kind of restless in his skin.

Nick kissed him, really kissed him this time, lips hot and eager. He felt the touch go through Vash like an electric shock and he did nothing to soften it, stroked his tongue immediately between Vash’s lips and into his warm mouth. He slid his tongue over Vash’s and knew without knowing that this tongue had tasted liquor and blood and sand and a thousand different foods, but never another person, never anything like this. Vash moaned against his mouth and for an uncountable length of time they just kissed, grappling on the bloodied floor. Vash learned kissing as quickly as he did everything else, gaining confidence in moments, both hands clenched tight in Nick’s coat sleeves.

Nick felt like there needed to be something said, maybe a lot of things said, since he wasn’t going to die now, and all cards were on the table. _Even those I meant to carry up my sleeves, so to speak, straight to the grave._ “Can you hear me? Can you feel me inside your head?”

“Yes, I can. Although I think it’s a bit different for me than for you. Wolfwood—”

“Nick,” the priest interrupted.

Vash smiled his real smile. It always hurt Nick’s heart in the best way, but this time the Plant looked startled, and Nick guessed he was feeling it the way Nick kept feeling the things inside Vash. He reached out, took Vash’s bare hand, pressed it to his chest. “Say my name,” Nick said. It was close to a command, and it got another smile.

“Nicholas…Nick,” Vash said gently. “We need to talk about…a lot of things. But we also need to go check on the girls.” He looked down at himself, at the obvious erection outlined in his pants, and his smile turned into a grimace. “Although, maybe after a couple minutes of thinking about thomases and property values.” Vash’s hand slid sideways, into Nick’s jacket, and he came out with a bent cigarette. “Just this once, I’m going to try one of these,” the blond declared.

“Those aren’t cheap ya know.” But Nick made no move to stop him as the rest of his pockets were hunted through for his matches. It just felt good to be touched. He watched, amused, as Vash tried it out, coughed and shuddered.

“Oh, that’s _terrible_.” Vash put the fresh cigarette to Nick’s lips instead, smiling, and Nick took it. “I could taste it earlier, so I was curious.”

“I woulda given you one ages ago if you’d asked.” Nick settled himself against a pew to smoke, unwilling to go back into the world until he’d done at least that much, put a few more minutes’ distance between himself and death. He was glad to be alive, no doubt about that, he hadn’t known how much he hadn’t wanted to die until the moment was upon him, but all the same the world was very hard. _There’s a lot to do. And Knives is waiting. God above, we’re still in such a load of trouble._ There was no question about it being _we._ _Good thing I’d made that decision already, before his almightly Plantliness scrambled our brains together._ He wondered if it would be worse, in the end, that Vash hadn’t let him die. If he could just accept death—any death, even Nick’s own, then Knives would have less power over him, but Nick had never found a way to tell him that.

Vash moved to sit next to him, shoulder to warm shoulder. “I wish I’d asked,” he said, and he was clearly figuring out the parameters of whatever he’d done to them because that sentence came laden with less unguarded emotional content, but all the same Nick thought they might not be talking about cigarettes anymore.

“Hard to believe nobody’s offered you a cigarette in all this time, spiky,” he said, and felt amusement in the movement of Vash’s shoulders.

“Oh, offers were made,” Vash admitted. “Maybe I just never really let myself think about it.” He frowned, lost in the metaphor. “Think about…cigarettes. Well, that doesn’t really work.”

Nick laughed softly. “We could just talk about sex, spiky. Hell, we can talk about anything you want, no lies, no metaphors.”

“No lies?” Vash asked softly, and Nick felt the emotion behind that, a welling sadness. He reached out, driven by a powerful instinct to touch, and wrapped an arm tight around Vash. He could get his hands on real flesh in only two places, Vash’s face or torn glove, so he went for the glove, twining their fingers together. It worked like strange magic, worked like prayer never did in real life, stole the sadness or at least balanced it. _Grace,_ Nick thought, feeling the gesture accelerate whatever was happening to them, the blending of the edges of their minds. _This is Grace._ He wanted to touch more, needed it, like nothing else in his life, a new craving that went deeper than even his powerful desire for nicotine.

“You got something to ask, spikes, ask it.” 

The matter of Vash’s brother swirled between them, a terrible urgency, but what Vash actually said was, “Kiss me again.” And Nick did, pinched out his half-smoked cigarette and pulled Vash close, invaded his mouth with hot tongue and the fresh taste of nicotine. And that was good, so Nick pushed Vash gently down, motions familiar and easy like their playfighting but with infinitely different stakes. That was better, and the sounds Vash made against Nick’s mouth weren’t performative at all, desperate and greedy and aroused. Their legs tangled and Vash spread his; Nick rocked his hips slowly against Vash’s, torturing them both sweetly with the press of cocks through too many layers of cloth. It felt like catching fire, somewhere inside his mind, all his tangled undergrowth burning, and Nick knew already he could never get enough, never have enough. He slid his hands up Vash’s arms, wrapped them around the blond’s wrists, and Vash lifted his hips against Nick, shaking with need. He didn’t give Vash’s mouth back long enough to hear the word _please_ , but it was there anyway, a desperation fully telepathic. It was probably close to impossible to rut someone to orgasm with just hips, through three layers of cloth and more than that of raw desperation, writhing like teenagers on the floor of a bloodied church, but Nick was willing to try anyway. _Take what I have,_ he remembered Vash saying, so he did, he followed that 'please' back up the trail of Vash’s thoughts and into his mind, indescribably beautiful, huge with memories and now illuminated with the ecstatic knowledge of another’s presence. Vash hadn’t ever been meant to be truly alone, that was clear even to Nick’s untutored senses, feeling electricity along his skin as parts of Vash lit up that had long been dark. The blond cried out against him, not orgasm but something maybe even deeper. Nick forgot they were dressed, forgot about the church, and the girls, and Knives, and everything else that was Not Vash. They were both burning, he could feel his own name in Vash’s mind, a desperate pleading, and still Nick could not stop kissing, pushing, trying as hard as he could to feed the flames. Higher and higher, so that when the sluice gate of orgasm finally opened it was a release indeed, and Nick returned to the world, to church and blood and uncertain future, as his best friend and new lover came gratefully in his pants, all but sobbing in Nick’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was eighteen years old when I saw Trigun, and until Trigun all the anime I'd seen, back in the beforetime of the year 2001, had been pretty light stuff. I watched Trigun during one of the lowest points of my life, trying to finish high school while living at a friend's house while managing my then-undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. ep 23 hit me like a truck; I can still remember how hard I cried. I have liked other anime as much, I have liked some more, but I have never forgotten Trigun and all the things it made me feel. And now I can write extensive, pornographic, self-indulgent fixit fics for it! yay! :D  
> But seriously, all the ways I've changed over the years between 18 and 38 have changed how I see the series, how I interpret Vash himself, and which character I identify with most strongly, but Paradise still makes me cry. So pretend with me that something else happened, instead.


End file.
